Putting your mark on a new camera.

I entirely agree with you Stephanie .
Most of my cameras have been new, in the box, which is just so fantastic , but all SLRs .Still have my SRT .
But I have also been tempted by rather questionable remade Russian Zorkis [ see icon ] just because it's like starting again ....acan't seem to find a new Leica IIIc !
but I have ASD stuff, so i am not rational !
 
Eh, I feel like I'm going back on my good revelation. But anyway, I'm on my way back to work and won't be home until around 10:00 PM tonight. I'm still thinking about this, really, but I may also have to buy a new Mac because I don't know how this one is going to hold up to Photoshop CS3. Eh, we'll see.
 
You can scratch an Ikon - I have, not deliberately! This may sound a bit functional but it is just a tool at the end of the day - key criterion is functionality. Does it do what you want it to do and do you find it easy to use. If it gets a few dings along the way, well it will. If it ends up looking well worn and well loved that's a bonus. It occurs to me that the well worn, well loved look is only likely to come about from a camera you love having round your neck and whose results you love looking at. Otherwise it will be shiny, unloved and in a cupboard!

Best of luck with your quest for printing perfection. Would be worth finding the best colour and B&W hand printers in the US (who ever it is who prints for the really big names over there), getting them to print some negs for you (to exhibition standard) and seeing what you get. If nothing it gives you a benchmark.
 
It isn't that I want to sell my work. I just want a camera that goes through the bumps and jostles along the way with only me. I probably won't sell any of my prints, ever...I don't have the negatives for most of the older things due to losing them when I moved and my newer stuff is going to be a lot of candid and other portraiture and Iowa landscape work that I don't know if anyone will even want to see. I wanted to do some nudes, but I don't know when I'll get those done. I want to do a stop motion movie-type thing, but I don't know when I'll get that done either. I'm realizing quickly that with this job there will be very little time for me to be doing anything apart from more job stuff. In fact, I'm thinking of getting a dark bag, bringing my chemicals, and doing my personal developing while at work so that I can get it done when I'm not doing anything else.

But anyway, my Nikon is going with me to the Stars game this weekend for some drunk photo action after the game. I've decided that I'm going to say screw work and actually go because I've been waiting for a month and after this week I'm going to deserve the break. So maybe you guys will see photos of me and my friends this weekend. :)
 
Stephanie Brim said:
Eh, I feel like I'm going back on my good revelation. But anyway, I'm on my way back to work and won't be home until around 10:00 PM tonight. I'm still thinking about this, really, but I may also have to buy a new Mac because I don't know how this one is going to hold up to Photoshop CS3. Eh, we'll see.
Click to expand...
Well, there you go...a new camera on one end of the workflow, a new Intel Mac on the other. The torture never stops...

BTW, looking forward to those pics of you and company. Just remember Rule One – no one opens a beer directly in front of the lens...! (unless there's a filter)


- Barrett
 
Stephanie,

You've posed and interesting concept, but there is another side to putting your mark on a camera. Many owners of classic cameras consider themselves to be caretakers of a piece of history and are fancinated by the history of the individual camera.

I own a Leitz Minolta CL. I've wondered (in passing, I'm not obsessed) how the camera got here. It was only sold in Japan, so was the camera purchased by a tourist as a souvineer or did it come home with a serviceman or servicewoman who was posted in the far east? Did someone's camera die on them in Japan and they purchased it for the rest of their trip? Did it's original owner imigrate to the U.S.? Where has the thing been for the last 35 years?This little mystery adds to the fun of owning classic cameras.

I also purchased a brand new M7 kit about 3 years ago. I had partially the same motivation that you're talking about when I bought it. Leicas were the ultimate camera 30 years ago when I first got into photography, so there was also a bit of owning my "dream camera" involved in the purchase as well. I traded about 95 pieces of classic camera equipment for it and that covered about half of the purchase price, so I never really was that sentimentally attached to the classics that I owned and traded.

Every mark on the M7 was made by me and dispite being very careful, there are a couple very light scratches. I couldn't tell you when any of them happened. I think it will probably take another 10 years before I really feel sentimental about it. It's still just an object, even though it was and still is my "dream" camera.

It's very difficult today to find anything that will become an heirloom, especially in the realm of technological items or tools. Things are changing far too fast. The ultimate digital cameras for sale 3 years ago are out of date today. I don't doubt that by the time I've had the M7 for 20 years, film, if it's available at all, will be too expensive to be an economically viable way to make many photographs. I guess from my perspective, if and when it comes to that, I will have had the chance to use an truely excellent camera and set of lenses and will have, hopefully, made many more memorable photographs with it.
 
However, I'm noting that Stephen at Cameraquest seems to have olive R2s...the very camera I stumbled into this forum to learn about. ;)
 
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